Avocado Growers

New Zealand

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NaturalNews

Look at Sainsbury's £1.30 avo, I think we can do better !

what are tescos selling

for hire

for sale

forum 1 - export matters

forum 2 - biennial bearing

forum 3 - AIC/AGA

forum 4 - Technical exchange

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(NaturalNews) Avocados are packed with vitamins, minerals, and essential fats that are vital for optimum health and wellbeing. They balance cholesterol levels and help to prevent heart attacks and strokes. In one study of people with moderately high cholesterol levels, individuals who ate a diet high in avocados showed clear health improvements after seven days.

Avocados also aid in the regulation of blood pressure.

The avocado pulp is both antibacterial and antifungal, so it fights off disease and keeps the immune system healthy. Avocados are also an excellent source of the amino acid lecithin which prevents liver overload, boosts memory and helps to balance weight.

Studies have also shown that avocado has properties to prevent breast cancer and especially oral cancer.

Welcome to the grower website

Fresh Food Technology.

Following extensive independent trials over four years on avocados by Cranfield University, It's Fresh Ltd, part of the Food Freshness Technology Group (FFT) has confirmed the benefits of their ethylene remover technology on all fruit supplied by Worldwide Fruit (WFL).

It follows the arrival last week of the speciality supersized Argentine variety Torres programmed in time to celebrate national avocado week from 24-30 October. Torres however will be available through to December.

It's Fresh! increases cold storage by over 30 days, and further extends shelf life in store for up to 6 extra days. Shipped in a standard box with an It's Fresh! sheet below the fruit, WFL triggers and then repacks the fruit into cell liners within a Tesco crate.

Click on the link to read about trials that have already been conducted to extend the life of avocados, why aren't we already using it ? I understand Worldwide Fruit (WFL) is related to Turners.

A funny thing happened.

I must apologise for not answering my emails, phone messages over the last week or so but a funny thing happened. The remaining 45,000kgs of crop on my trees that was destined to fall to the ground or maybe filtered onto the local market was needed, yes needed by an exporter for the Australian market. The market over there is strengthening and offering good returns by this seasons standards, the only downside is the exporter who is dumping 40 foot containers onto small vendors who have little room to store it and with fruit maturity have to move it on quickly (at a lower price), can you guess who that is, and whatever happened to flow plans ? What a year, who would have thought 3 months ago we would be airfreighting to fill a shortage in Australia. Can you really run a business like this ?

Grade Standards.

I'd like to start a discussion on grade standards, the reason is that I think the current grade standards are costing growers millions of dollars. For instance there have been times this year where my local market return has been in the region of $1.50/tray (sometimes less) but we all know that if we were feeding 30,000 or 40,000 trays onto the local market instead of 70,000 to 100,000 trays then we would received $20/tray. Taking averages the value for 35,000 trays at $20 is $700,000, whereas 85,000 trays at $1.50 is $127,500 - so we're giving away 50,000 trays of fruit AND $572,500 each week, yes each week. This season the same has effectively happened in Australia. What I would like to suggest we talk about is setting our grade standards based on what markets will take(i.e. get it ALL overseas), at the moment we produce Ferraris and sell them at Fiat prices. So, we put no more than 40,000 trays on the local market each week, we feed crop to Australia in a business like manner at a rate they can manage, returning $20/tray. The rest we find markets for elsewhere, the world is hungry and we're dumping our fruit into markets that can't consume the quantities and don't want to pay for it. In my travels through Germany, France, the UK, Crete, Croatia, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane I have never seen an Avocado the quality of a NZ tag1, never. I don't know if that's because they're kept in storage for too long or what, look at my links to Tesco and Sainburys. If our current exporters can't find markets for our products we will have to do it ourselves, but it would probably be easier to come to an agreement with a group of exporters.

The current grade standards seem to me to be designed to make life easy for marketers, let's start thinking of ways of making life easier for the important and most overlooked part of our industry - the grower.

What do you think ? Letters, emails, forum or phone calls please.

There may be some end of season good news.

It seems that demand has finally caught up with supply in Australia lifting tray prices to around AUD$29.
Supply of Shepard may be a little late into the market.
This should boost grower returns for those still exporting.

What are other Avocado producing countries doing ?

A European year of avocado supply and demand, read the week by week accounts.
Kenya investigates the European Avocado market.
The sentiment in Europe is upbeat in terms of price as they’re foreseeing a shortage now that Peru is going to the USA, read more.
American retail prices.
Towards a new geographical pattern for the world avocado trade ? Takes some time to download but an interesting read.

Questions to ask your Exporter

Where is your fruit being sold.
Has it been shipped to an order or is it on consignment.
What is the size of your inventory compared to your orders.
What percentage of the old fruit was sold on the wholesale market, and at what price.
What percentage of the old fruit has needed to be dumped.

Just complete your exporters email address and , add your name and PPIN.

Please send the response to .

$5 - $7

After all the talk, more talk, plans that were in place, industry visions, growers told to work, spray and anything else they could think of to raise their production figures (and AIC levys) we end up with effectively nothing, well less than nothing. The season is looking like a disaster of epic proportions and although finger pointing is not a very nice business, you have to find somewhere to start. I think it is safe to say we need a genuine grower group to do this for us, how about some volunteers ?

If you are still expecting an ogr of $10 to $15 please let us know.

Are growers interested in comparing information about their local market returns, our first pick local market fruit went to Fresh Direct, here is one of their BCTI's, we did actually receive as little as $1.20 from them for a W47 of 120ct fruit. That's 6 cents a kilo for tag2 fruit.

I have a feeling there will be many things to discuss at the end of this export season, I have listed below some that I have thought of but I suspect there will be others, please let me know.

Firstly I would like to think growers will want to study the performance of all post harvest activities, from their pickers through to their packhouse and exporter. Already I have reports that the Korean market was undercut in the same way as it was a couple of years ago, I have also heard that the Japanese price was forced down from nearly 2,600 yen per tray to just over 1,000 yen per tray by competing NZ exporters, if true this is very disturbing. But no doubt more information will be coming available as the season progress's. I would also like to know what growers think of the local market campaign that was run this season, it was obviously very important with such a large crop expected.

To keep discussions to the point I have initially set up 4 forums to discuss (1) export matters, (2) biennial production, (3) the AIC's performance and (4) growers queries.

Please visit the articles page and check out the pruning videos.

Absorb more nutrients from your food by adding avocados, read more.

For more information on high density planting visit the articles page.